OBJECTIVES: (1) To develop and validate a brief diagnostic psychiatric screening interview achieved through the application of innovative mulivariate analytic techniques to symptom patterns in various patient and non-patient populations. The computer method used to develop this instrument both chooses which questions should be asked and orders them so as to allow the most rapid assignment to a diagnostic group. The efficiency of the instrument is evaluated by comparing its results with those of a long diagnostic instrument in a data bank of existing interview records and in prospective studies of psychiatric patients. (2) A study of the transmission of school and police problems between generations. 235 young black men were chosen from school records and interviewed. Eighty of them had fathered 159 children now over 18. School and police records for these black urban parents and all offspring over 18 have been collected, and are supplemented by intensive interviews with the fathers. The sample includes both deviant and non-deviant parents. By illuminting circumstances under which parental deviance is not transmitted to the offspring it may suggest effective techniques of intervention with high-risk children. (3) To investigate correlates of suicidal ideation, behavior and attitudes in 105 patient and 104non-patient older white and black men. These men have been matched for age. Interviews and psychological tests for brain damage have been conducted. BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Robins L: Discussion of genetic studies of criminality and psychopathology, in Genetic Research in Psychiatry, Fieve R, Rosenthal D, Brill H (Eds), Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1975. (pp.117-122).Robins LN, West PA, Herjanic B: Arrest and delinquency in two generations. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 16: 125-140, 1975. Reprinted in Annual Progress in Child Psychiatry and Child Development, S. Chess and A. Thomas (Eds), 1976.